The Hardball Times Annual is just about off to the printer—got to finish the cover because we’re self-publishing this year—but I thought I’d give you a heads up. This year, Brad Johnson handles our postseason coverage in bravura fashion and it’s included in the book—unlike previous years, when you had to download the PDF after […]

100 years ago today, one of the best second basemen not in the Hall of Fame passed away. His name was Cupid Childs, and despite the aggressively non-athletic sounding name, he was a dynamo during his prime. He won a starting job at second baseman in 1890 for Syracuse in the dying days of the […]

Today marks the 125th birthday of one of the greatest ballplayers who ever lived, Walter Johnson. He’s famous for several things. He won 417 games, the most of any 20th century pitcher. He did it despite toiling for many seasons with a substandard Washington Senators team. (While it’s true the Senators were typically bad when […]

Twenty years ago today, former Pirates reliever Rod Scurry died due to drug addiction. Officially, it was a heart attack that killed him, but even more officially it was a cocaine-induced heart attack. Thus ended one of the saddest stories—maybe the saddest storry—of drugs and baseball. Scurry was hardly the only player from his era […]

50 years ago today, one of the best players in baseball history went pro. On Nov. 1, 1962, the Houston Astros (or Colt .45s, as they were known back then) signed a 19-year-old kid named Joe Morgan. They didn’t have to go too far to find Morgan, as he was a Texan himself. Then again, […]

The World Series is over, a lot sooner than most fans were hoping. We’re now stuck in that twilight zone where we can either look forward to the 2013 season, or backward to the season that was. I don’t have my glasses with me right now, so five months ahead is just a blur. I’m […]

20,000 days ago, one of the more stunning and depressing accidents in baseball history occurred. It was Jan. 28, 1958, when Dodgers great Roy Campanella became paralyzed in a car accident. Campanella, like most players back in pre-free agency days, had an offseason job to augment his income. He operated a liquor store in Harlem. […]

The 2012 World Series avoids the fate of being judged by WPS as the least exciting World Series ever. As for avoiding the sweep, well, we can’t have everything. Game 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 F Giants 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 1 4 Tigers 0 […]

Ten years ago today, three teams hired new managers. None of the men had ever managed in the big leagues before, but they’ve all hung around. None has had that much success, but they all managed to find work, even after their first team let them go. Combined, they’ve managed 3,840 games in the last […]

Well, things look down for Detroit, don’t they? The Tigers are the 24th team to lose the first three games of the World Series, and down three games to none is a rough spot to be in a best-of-seven series. To figure out what might happen, let’s look at the past to see what happened […]